Author Information: John Bunyan

From the publisher
Born the son of a tinker in 1628, John Bunyan entered the world during a time of political and spiritual unrest. Plagued with poverty, sorrow, and disappointment, Elstow, England produced a coldness in the young Bunyan's heart, leaving him little empathy for his young bride's pleas to join her in church. It was his father-in-law's torture by religious authorities that surprisingly ignited a fire in Bunyan, converting him and driving him to witness wherever he went to preach in barns, shops and village greens. The large crowds that resulted ultimately led to his arrest on charges of conducting religious meetings without permission of the State Church. Studying, preaching, and writing in prison, the tinker preacher continued to support his family through the making of shoelaces from his prison cell. It was during this imprisonment that Bunyan received the vision for his fascinating allgory, The Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan died in 1688 after riding 40 miles in the rain to preach to the very man who had assisted in having him jailed.